AI重写全球商业，谁将掌握增长的主动权？｜第十一届灵眸大赏启动

On December 4, 2026, the 11th Morketing Summit will take place in Shanghai. This year’s theme is “Born Intelligent.” Through one global main forum, five breakout forums, a series of closed-door discussions, annual publication launches and the Morketing Awards Gala Dinner, we will explore marketing and business growth in the AI era together with the industry.

As we enter our 11th edition, I want to begin with a straightforward question: When content can be generated at scale and ad delivery becomes increasingly automated, how can marketing give consumers a reason to choose your brand while creating real additional value for your business?

This question shapes how next year’s budgets should be allocated, which capabilities teams need to retain, and what will enable a company to go further. We hope that on December 4, everyone will arrive with the challenges they face and leave better equipped to make decisions.

People in marketing will recognize this situation: Every platform offers a new opportunity. Every tool promises greater efficiency. Every proposal comes with impressive numbers. Yet in the business review meeting, the questions remain: We have spent the money, but how much additional business has it generated? And how much of that growth will last?

In China, this challenge is particularly tangible. A consumer may discover a brand through a short video, look for recommendations in an online community, and ultimately compare prices and buy on another platform. Every stage requires investment, yet no single report can easily reveal what actually drove the purchase.

Consumers are also thinking more carefully about what is worth buying. NIQ’s consumer outlook for 2026 notes that persistent uncertainty is influencing spending decisions, with consumers placing greater emphasis on trust, convenience and tangible value. For brands, this means every new product launch and every price adjustment must answer a simple question: What problem are you actually solving for me?

But different businesses face different challenges.

For food, beverage, personal care and household care brands, the challenge is whether consumers will keep buying after a promotion ends. For automotive, home appliance and smart hardware brands, it is translating technical advantages into benefits people understand and are willing to pay for. For games and apps, once a download has been acquired through paid marketing, user retention and revenue determine whether that investment was worthwhile.

The challenge becomes more complex across global markets, where consumer habits, channel structures and competitive conditions differ. A product may sell well in China, but why would consumers in another country need it? Would the same content, pricing and channels still work? To grow overseas, businesses must factor cultural understanding, local operations and service capabilities into their growth calculations.

Morketing believes Chinese businesses therefore face two challenges simultaneously: At home, strengthen the businesses they have already built. Globally, identify new needs and develop the ability to serve them over the long term.

Meanwhile, AI is changing how businesses look for answers. Content production, consumer decision-making and internal collaboration have all entered a new phase of experimentation. As AI begins to compare and recommend products, brands need to be understood accurately by machines as well as by people. As content becomes easier to produce, what becomes truly scarce is a reason to be trusted and remembered.

Similar questions are appearing on industry stages around the world. Cannes Lions’ 2026 content framework includes creative effectiveness on limited budgets and how to avoid sameness in the AI era. Advertising Week New York’s announced 2026 stage lineup includes discussions about AI’s impact on audience reach, commerce media and customer growth.

Rooted in Asia-Pacific and reaching a global audience, Morketing Summit has a responsibility to raise these questions and bring them back to one central issue: The industry needs to explain clearly how marketing moves business forward. When every company uses more efficient tools to compete for the same customers, improving efficiency in one part of the process may not translate into better business results for everyone. We need to return to people’s needs, find those who remain underserved, and make clear why a product is worth buying. That is how we can find new sources of growth.

I have always believed that marketing should help businesses identify needs, make innovation understood and build trust. When these things are done well, a good product has a chance to reach the people who need it, and a single purchase has a chance to become a lasting relationship. This is the answer the 11th Morketing Summit hopes to find together with the industry.

This year, our theme is “Born Intelligent.”

Building on last year’s “Awakening Intelligence,” we are focusing on what happens when intelligence becomes part of real business: how organizations work, how consumers choose, and where brand growth comes from.

The summit therefore follows a “1+5+N” format. In the morning, the main forum will help establish a shared understanding. In the afternoon, five breakout forums will run in parallel, allowing participants to choose the discussion most relevant to their business.

The global main forum will bring macroeconomic shifts, AI and business structures, international platforms and global brands into one conversation. By examining the broader picture, we hope to identify the questions that can shape a company’s next move: If AI agents begin screening products on behalf of consumers, how can a brand enter their consideration set? As platforms and tools become more powerful, which capabilities must businesses retain themselves? And which measures of marketing value genuinely reflect business performance?

These insights then need to be put into practice. The five breakout forums are designed to help participants move from understanding trends to knowing how to act.

“AI-Native Branding and Growth” is designed for brand CEOs, CMOs and marketing leaders. It will explore how brands can be accurately understood when AI participates in recommendations, while addressing a longer-term question: When everyone can produce content efficiently, how can brands remain distinctive and ensure that today’s investment drives sales now and brand preference in the future?

“New Gateways to E-Commerce, Channels and Transactions” will examine the shift from consumers searching for products to expressing their needs and making decisions with assistance from AI agents. How can new forms of shopping assistance connect products, payments and transactions? Beyond a single sale, can a business build profitability, repeat purchases and lasting customer relationships?

“Global Growth for Game and App Developers” will examine paid user acquisition alongside product strategy, retention, user spending and monetization. It will explore growth strategies for different markets and how developers can retain control of their data and exercise independent strategic judgment as platforms become more automated.

“Short Drama, Entertainment and the Creator Economy” will explore how content can function simultaneously as a product, a communications channel and a brand asset. As barriers to production fall, which stories are still worth paying for? How can a one-off collaboration or a single hit develop into a more enduring business?

“AI-Driven Growth” will take these questions into the way companies work, both internally and with external partners. After experimenting with many tools, how can businesses integrate them into actual workflows? Does the time saved translate into growth? Across brands, platforms and service providers, who is responsible for what, and how should results be measured?

The main forum will help participants assess direction, the breakout forums will help them find practical approaches, and the closed-door discussions will create space to explore specific business challenges in greater depth. We want participants to see the whole picture while finding discussions directly relevant to their own businesses.

Whether a conference is worth attending ultimately depends on whether it helps you make a better decision.

Across its first ten editions, Morketing Summit has consistently brought firsthand experience and thinking to the industry. In 2023, P&G’s Ann Yang shared how to build brands consumers love and lead category growth. In 2024, BYD’s Li Yunfei discussed telling the story of China’s new energy vehicle brands; L’Oréal’s JeeSeon Park explored creating sustainable value with consumers and ecosystem partners; and Xiaohongshu’s You Si brought content-led product discovery back to its foundation: understanding consumers.

From the long-term stewardship of international brands to Chinese companies expanding globally and platforms deepening their understanding of users, these perspectives give us an opportunity to test our own judgment against a broader view of the market.

Brands need to understand the limits of platform capabilities. Platforms need to understand the business pressures advertisers face. Service providers need to hear which problems clients are genuinely willing to pay to solve. Bringing these perspectives together can turn dialogue into the next opportunity for collaboration.

This year, we will also release the Morketing Summit Yearbook, the Morketing Annual, and the 2027 Global Digital and Intelligent Marketing Services Guide. From more than 100 marketing case studies from the year to global trends and the marketing services ecosystem, we hope to turn the discussions at the summit into resources participants can take back to their companies, study further and put to use.

For brands, the value of the day lies in building a stronger basis for next year’s decisions about budgets, organizational structure and partners. For platforms, it means placing their capabilities in the context of clients’ businesses and answering the question, “What additional value can I help you create?” For B2B professionals, it means understanding how client needs are changing and which capabilities they should build next.

These are precisely the questions that benefit from people sitting down together. When businesses work through challenges alone, they can mistake an industry-wide shift for a problem unique to their company. They can also mistake another company’s success for a universally applicable formula. By examining practices across different markets and stages of development, we can make clearer judgments about what can be adapted and what must be built afresh.

For our 11th edition, we want to bring together people with firsthand experience, those making decisions now, and those who can offer new approaches. We want useful experience to reach more businesses, helping the industry avoid repeated trial and error and achieve more real growth. Ultimately, businesses should earn lasting returns by understanding and serving consumers better.

December 4. Shanghai. The 11th Morketing Summit. We invite brand decision-makers, platform partners and B2B professionals to bring the questions they most want to resolve and join us in clarifying marketing’s next steps and putting them into practice.

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Email inquiries: zengqiao@morketing.com